Introduction
Business analytics techniques are used to facilitate decision making by transforming large amounts of raw data into meaningful information. Many businesses rely on analysis of relevant historical data to make key strategic and operational decisions with the goal of gaining or maintaining competitive advantage.
Therefore, understanding how to use techniques such as graphical representation and descriptive statistics to translate raw data into useful information can be a valuable skill in an organization.
In this assignment and the next, you will have the opportunity to sharpen your analytics skills by locating and interpreting real-life stock data, creating a business report, and presenting the information from the business report with your supervisor and colleagues as part of a decision-making effort.
Scenario
You are a member of a business analyst group interested in a publicly traded company. Your supervisor has asked you to create a presentation including graphical representations from raw stock data.
From that raw stock data, you are to create a business report for a company-wide meeting at the end of the quarter. Your work and the work of others will result in a Business Report that will be utilized to help company leadership make decisions.
Your Role
Your first task is to pick a publicly held company with only one business platform. So do not pick Apple, Amazon, Disney, et cetera. You want a company that plays in only one industry. Then you are to provide an overview of the company, including business context, as noted in Unit 4 Planning Ahead area. Remember business context includes many aspects of the company, industry, competition, et cetera.
The second task is prepping stock history data from the business/company and creating scatterplots and histograms.
The third task is to calculate mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the adjusted daily closing stock price and the stock volume.
The fourth task is to provide a summary of the information you provide (including data analysis) without bias and with factual information including citations.
It is your responsibility to present visually and to interpret the data into meaningful information using analysis and descriptive statistics.
Instructions
Select a publicly traded business/stock that plays in only one industry in which you have interest. Download the raw data on the company’s stock history.
Follow these steps to locate and download stock history from Yahoo! Finance:
Go to Yahoo! Finance website, linked in the resources.
Search for and find the stock information of the company you have chosen. Remember: Do not use a company that plays in multiple industries.
Once you pull up the general data on the company, review the screen links throughout until you find the link for Historical Data. Click on the Historical Data link. Then select the following settings above the table:
Select Time Period of one year.
Select “Historical Prices.”
Select Frequency as “Daily.”
Click Apply.
Click Download Data. Go to the bottom of your screen or your Downloads folder to open the Excel file you just downloaded. Open the Excel file. Check to be sure that you have enough lines to show the whole year. If not, reset the settings at the top of the Historical Data chart and try again.
Once you are sure that you have a years worth of data, save the Excel file.
Using the Excel file with the years stock data, conduct descriptive analysis as follows:
Create a scatterplot of the highest stock price (in the column labeled “High”) against time. Write several sentences explaining the process/steps by which you created this graph.
Create a scatterplot of the lowest stock price (in the column labeled “Low”) against time. Write several sentences explaining the process/steps by which you created this graph.
Create a histogram of the adjusted daily closing stock price (in the column labeled “Adj Close”). Make sure the histogram is meaningful by adjusting the bin size so you can see the shape of the histogram. Write several sentences explaining the process/steps by which you created this graph.
Create a histogram of the stock trading volume (in the column labeled “Volume”). Make sure the histogram is meaningful by adjusting the bin size so you can see the shape of the histogram. Write several sentences explaining the process/steps by which you created each graph.
For each of the four graphs:
Make sure the x and y axis have appropriate labels. For example, Stock Price in USD or Date D/M/Y.”
Change the title of the graph to communicate what the graph is communicating.
Add optionscolor, trendlines, legend, other?
Calculate the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the adjusted daily closing stock price.
Put answers of calculations in table format for easy review.
Write several sentences explaining the process by which you calculated these statistics.
Calculate the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the stock volume. Put in table format for easy review. Write a sentence explaining the process by which you calculated these statistics.
Prepare a 45 page report that you would present to your supervisor, including the following:
An APA-formatted title page.
A 12 page introduction describing the background of your chosen company and its practical extensive business context. You should use at least four sources of information on the company, industries the company participates in, history, mission, platforms, products, competitive advantage, and competitors by industry.
A section labeled Graphical Representations of Data, in which you include the four graphs you created above and short descriptions of the process you used to create each graph.
A section labeled Descriptive Statistics, in which you include the statistics you calculated above and explanation of the procedures you followed to calculate the statistics.
A summary of what the data suggest. No opinion please. See textbook information on how to interpret data. Please remain unbiased in your summary. You may use additional resources (and cite) to help you interpret the data. For example: What does Standard Deviation say about stock volatility?
